18: What skills does your muse have and how did they come to have them? Was it hard work to learn them? What do they use their skills for? Are there any skills your muse wishes they had?
Jacket is extremely good at his job.He can move quickly and quietly, his every step has a purpose, andhe is generally able to use any randominstrument as a proficient weapon.
This came from a rough upbringingon the mean streets of Miami, anda career in the US Army that he onlybarely made it home from.
He wishes that he could relate toother people. He has a hard timeholding a conversation, as he tends to find most people to beloud and pushy, and his own violentnature leads him to be wary anddownright paranoid of others, becausehe knows first hand the kind of atrocitiespeople are capable of.
15. How materialistic are they? Do they often throw things out or are they hoarders? Do they store their memories in their heads, in photo albums or in countless of boxes of belongings in the attic?
Jacket has a penchant to hold onto things.His home is often a mess, mostly dueto his own apathy, but partially because heis a man who can’t let things go. In lieu ofa family photo, he carries a photo of himselfand the man who saved his life during the war.To him, this was a symbol of why he was alive,and why he had to keep going.
How concerned are they with their appearance and how do they regard the appearance of others? Do they find it important? Do they enjoy aesthetically pleasing people?
His own appearance is probably the last thing he cares about, or even is concerned with? He gets so caught up in work and his own head that I think he just forgets what he looks like, and then he passes by a mirror and it’s like
damn i’m scraggly
but even then, it doesn’t bother him.
Other people though, he’s guilty of acting differently. (ie; “the lady who came into the store was so pretty i started dropping things”, “he kept smiling at me and i lost all of my basic motor skills’, etc. etc.) but he does try to get a fucking grip and not stare.
Are they addicted to anything at all? Do they crave something when they haven’t had it in a while? Has this ever endangered them or others?
No, at least not anything even nearly recent. He had a nasty heroin problem for about a year in college, but that was a long time ago, and it was a really desperate circumstance. When it got dangerous, he kicked that shit fast.
Does your muse have any irrational fears that hold them back in life? Do they come from experience (trauma) or is it, for instance, part of a belief system they have?
I would just say yes but it’s….more complicated.
Signing up for the war was supposed to fix everything. It was supposed to set his head straight. Go in, do a little war, be a big bad american soldier, and then get out and start fresh. No more idiot film student who got so close to the perfect chance and blew it, no more drifter who can’t stay in one state for too long because nowhere feels right. No more victim. Just a hero.
That’s obviously not what happened, because war never happens that way, but what propaganda piece wants to be rational? Who wants to tell all the bright eyed young men that actually, it isn’t pretty to shoot down another human being, it doesn’t do anything good for you.
Rouven doesn’t like hurting people, but that’s what he suddenly had to do. Then the ghost wolves happened, and then the power plant happened, and
then it was just over.
It was hard to just get over what happened and go back to living normal, even though of the 3 people who ended up meaning the most to him, 1 was left and he was on the other side of the country. But he still did it. Now he has a job he loves, a house (full of all of these boxes of photos and film reel and junk from the past thats just starting to feel like grounding instead of…bad memories) he loves, and it feels like….maybe. not definite, but definitely maybe. Then what happens?
By just about a hair, he misses death. Just like in Hawaii. Just like that awful fucking night.
But now, instead of like before, he has nothing to show for it. Everything about the life of Rouven Blankenfeld has been wiped clean off the face of the Earth, along with pretty much everything else in San Francisco. Now all of those material things are gone, and he desperately wants them back, he wants his identity back.
But now, everything’s been ripped away because for 2 or 3 years of his life, he wasn’t Rouven Blankenfeld. He was Dan, or Ben Smith, or whatever fake fucking person he had to pretend to be.
That’s when the blackouts start. Technically it’s disassociating to cope with mental stress, but he’s not a doctor, and the nature of it doesn’t help make it easier to make any sense of it all. Now he’s living in between giant holes in his memory and that just makes the loss of identity worse.
Who is he? Where is he? What day is it?
Work is coping. If he just….works. It becomes a cycle. and people start recognizing him, too. They know him by name. The way he’s just so affable and bright, people remember that. Didn’t I see you early?
Maybe he doesn’t realize it, but he’s living for that.
But on the other side of it, now he’s stuck in the cycle and there’s no way out if it until a psycho in a rat mask shows up and shoots you in the middle of the day.
and you survive.
So, in a very deeply complicated way, the fear of still being alive is holding Rouven back from truly being alive.
If this shit really does get into Miami, then I’m gonna have so much fun writing about it. All the sorts of places Boss would visit, the different sights to see, how things work, all these sorts of really interesting and neat little things I can add.
CAUSE I’VE BEEN LIVING HERE MY WHOLE LIFE, BABY. AH HA HA. WATCH AS I REFERENCE SHIT PEOPLE DON’T KNOW ABOUT.
